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User: phek

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  1. Re:This has always been one of my gripes on Introducing Students To the World of Open Source · · Score: 1

    after a decade of being a professional developer i think one of the most important yet overlooked aspects of development is writing requirement docs. Having a very detailed requirement doc that you get approved by the client (or the non-technical people of your company) will give you a great outline of the project to base your time/cost estimates on as well as an official piece of paper to show the client when they complain that there's no option to save files (or whatever).

    I've worked at companies where the sales staff writes the requirements doc and its helpful, but when someone technical writes them up it's way more helpful to the development staff.

  2. 3x the cost of the retail price on Considering a Fair Penalty For Illegal File-sharing · · Score: 1

    I think three times the retail cost of each song/movie proven to be distributed. 2/3 the fine goes to the plaintiff (to recoup their "lost" money including court costs) and the other 1/3 as penalty paid to the court. That will keep judges from taking cases where the plaintiff can only prove they distributed a song or two because they downloaded it from them.

  3. Re:Oh, the outrage! on MS Adds Security Suite To Update Service, Antivirus Rival Objects · · Score: 1

    well the market itself isn't artificial but the industry is. All the AVs use the same engine to detect virus and the detection engine is the heart of the industry. The rest of the market crying foul when MS releases its own engine is completely retarded though. I'm not a fan (or user) of microsoft products but i'm impressed about this release. It's nice to see a company going the extra mile to keep the software that they released secure and up to date.http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/11/05/205256/MS-Adds-Security-Suite-To-Update-Service-Antivirus-Rival-Objects#

  4. Re:Free speech? Hardly on UK Pressures the US To Takedown Extremist Videos · · Score: 1

    actually the constitution doesn't allow us any rights, it prevents the government from impeding on those rights. huge difference there. also treasonous speech is also protected by the first amendment because according to the constitution treason has nothing to do with speech

  5. Re:Maybe there's a connection on UK Pressures the US To Takedown Extremist Videos · · Score: 1

    we didn't as much drag you along with us as you weren't paying attention while riding our coat tails only to finally take a look around and realize you were in the middle of a war (or two).

    Had you of had enough control of your own government at the time perhaps you could have stopped ours from declaring a war on deserts.

    I'm basically trying to say you're just as much to blame as we are except that at least you guys aren't isolated by a couple of oceans from the rest of the world and should have realized shit was about to get bad (probably worse for you than us due to those oceans) while we were off living in our own little fantasy world. Only 22% of americans even have passports so that means most americans have never been anywhere other than the US and possibly canada or mexico so we have no idea what goes on in the rest of the world or how different it actually is. It's your job to let us know when we try doing something over there that is out of the norm because we have no fucking idea.

  6. Re:Oh come on, now on UK Pressures the US To Takedown Extremist Videos · · Score: 1

    actually there's not much difference between the two. The founders of this country openly expressed the need for revolutions and envisioned it happening again in this country. Without the ability to freely get on our soap boxes and talk shit on others (politicians or citizens) we wouldn't have the ability to overthrow a tyrannical government. Of course if you're conspiring a plan to kill anyone, that's illegal and punishable but the government can't restrict your access to do that.

    How about instead of banning the content someone posts, you arrest them? Oh what they did isn't an arrestable offense but you don't want people to hear what they're saying? well you can't do that. (i have no idea what they're saying or who they are in the video so i'm not sure how much it relates).

  7. Re:Doesn't matter what he did on The Science of Battlestar Galactica · · Score: 1

    The first season of stargate universe was horrible, i had started calling the the show "stuck" because every episode was just about being stuck somewhere (the ship, a room, some planet). Luckily this season seems to have picked up a bit but i wouldn't at all of been disappointed if they cancelled it after the first season.

    S:U suffers from the same thing caprica and many other shows suffer from lately (including this season of sons of anarchy). Nothing happens in most episodes, you only get like 2 or 3 episodes a season of anything important happening to advance the story. Stargate SG1 seemed to have a good setup (similar to x-files). 75% of the episodes consisted of an interesting story within itself which left you with the feeling that they could use something that was told in that episode later in the season/show arc. The other 25% were usually just entertaining filler episodes to show something cool happen that doesn't happen in peoples lives.

    Come to think of it, these horrible seasons of shows all seemed to start when the writers strike ended. Did something happen from that resolution to get networks to ask for shows like that or are the writers doing this on purpose for job security/revenge?

  8. Re:Good! on Google Sues US Gov't For Only Considering Microsoft · · Score: 1

    One of my few government bids I did, the head of the company who won the RFI contract was contracted by the state board to help them find the best RFP proposal. Surprisingly enough the RFP contract went to the same company who wrote the RFI and who's head was contracted by the state to help them choose.

  9. Re:Not bad but.. on Hiding Backdoors In Hardware · · Score: 1

    I saw Ralf-Philipp Weinmann's talk on this at toorcon (although he spoke about embedded controllers). His hope which seemed reasonable was that manufacturers should release a hash against the the firmware and during boot we could compare the firmware against a hash list.

  10. Re:Relevance of home theater PCs? on Wireless HDMI At 1080p, Lag-Free WHDI Tested · · Score: 1

    Game consoles are sold for GAMES.

    they might usually be sold for games but LOTS of people use them for other things. I went over to some chicks house (who was not tech savvy at all) a couple of weeks ago and she was using her wii to stream netflix. Sure people aren't going to build a their own htpc but they will use something that provides the same (and even pay some cost for it). If someone marketed a device that would download tv shows for them and play (and possibly even allow things like old console games to be played) they would pay something for those too.

    Personally I never got a tivo because they were expensive compared to the monthly cost of a dvr. Now i don't even have a dvr and just use my ps3 on one tv and an htpc on another (though the ps3 will be replaced with an htpc soon because the ps3 makes for a horrible media center).

  11. portions of the internet on Most Americans Support an Internet Kill Switch · · Score: 1

    I think the key here is that it says "portions of the internet." That even makes me want to say yes. Had they of asked if they thought "should the president be allowed to shut off americas ability to communicate with each other over the internet" which is what would actually pass, I'm sure the results of the poll would have dramatically changed.

  12. Re:More gamers have lives on Are Games Getting Easier? · · Score: 1

    although i agree that making it through the tutorial would be nice, it wouldn't be difficult to make it through if games weren't so slow paced. When i'm running around in a game i want to be doing something constantly rather than just running. If you think back to mario or zelda there were constantly enemies on the screen that you could get to within two seconds (or they would get to you). Games now, you have to run around for 30 seconds before you find an enemy or something to doo. It's really just bullshit, these games that already feel short because they're only 12 hours long are in rreality even shorter because h3/4 of the time is running around doing nothing.

  13. Re:Sad git on Are Games Getting Easier? · · Score: 1

    why do you have to beat it in one sitting for it to be short? I play video games for what averages out to maybe half an hour a day. That being the case, I would be happier if when i finished the game i felt like i was any better at the game than when i started other than now i know where to go.

  14. Re:Judges are alowed to order strange things on Bicycle Thief Barred From Using Encryption · · Score: 1

    although I doubt this is the reason, it does make sense. When you're put on probation, you give up your right to privacy/search and seizure. If you're able to encrypt your data then authorities can't monitor you whenever/however they want and you can't really allow them to either. Of course you could say that by not being allowed to encrypt data you are being stripped of your right to protect your body and possessions.

  15. Re:WHAT vendors? on Red Hat CEO Says Software Vendor Model Is Broken · · Score: 1

    i think his point is that the vendors sell what makes work easier for Company A, B, and C to Company D even though only the features that make work for Company B are helpful to Company D. So now Company D has to buy all those other features which they'll never use and Company A and C will have to buy the features that help all the other companies when they have to renew their license.

    Using the CEO's airline model, they were able to get say the catering industry to reduce costs by not providing something like resealable plastic containers and instead opting to use a cheaper single use container. In the software industry with the model the way it is, we can't make changes on a per client basis.

  16. Re:Obituary != Birthday Card on Nintendo Entertainment System Turns 25 · · Score: 1

    I think i still have my self made maps of wizardry in some box somewhere from when i was like 10.

  17. Re:Sure makes you feel old on Nintendo Entertainment System Turns 25 · · Score: 1

    i can give you two answers. the first is that there may have been the same ratio, but there were a lot less games so when a good one came out, it was exciting.

    the second was that games then were short so they made games much harder. you had to become proficient at button combinations and knowing what was about to happen and the physics of the game. once you learned it for that game you felt a sense of accomplishment. with current games, your character just learns new skills so you can't just start the game over and be way better at level 1 than you were when you first started playing.

    Then there were games like zelda which didn't consist of a map (other than the realistic looking one that came with the game) there was cool shit hidden all over. So you just had to wander around aimlessly not really even having much of an idea of where you were in comparison to where you started until you played enough that you had a good map in your head. With current games you get a map and even though it may not be filled in to start, once it does start getting filled in you can tell, "oh well i need to go left 5 screens down 1 and i'm at that place where i get healed."

  18. Re:wrong OS? on Desktop Linux Is Dead · · Score: 1

    what ever happened to 'bsd is not unix'?

  19. Re:Maybe stop surfing /. all day long on IT's Last Hope — a Job In the Boonies? · · Score: 1

    you do realize that you're trying to sell us all on firing the anti-social engineers because you did and haven't shown any proof that it has worked for you? By the sounds of it you don't know how a development process should run.

    Here's the deal, you have your sales people (you) who promise a client everything under the sun and don't know how to interface with the engineers at their own company.

    Then you have the engineers (the engineers who were fired) who are great at producing stuff but sometimes are bad at communicating with non-engineers.

    Then in the middle you have people such as project managers (the "engineers" you kept) who can interface with sales people, clients and engineers. These project managers know how the overall details of a project from a technical side but don't fully understand the code. Some of them may be good engineers as well but they feel they'll either be able to make more money or have less stress or something like that if they aren't purely just engineers any more. These guys will keep you afloat for a little while, while these project managers who aren't so good at the engineering try sinking the ship. Eventually the ones who are good at engineering will leave the company due to too much stress because they basically got demoted. Then all you'll have left is the people sinking the ship.

  20. Re:It's tougher than you think... on Convincing Your Employer To Go With FOSS? · · Score: 1

    I can honestly say that in my 10+ years of working as a sysadmin and software developer I have yet to see an amazing windows admin (and I started off working as a windows/novell admin). I have met competent windows admins, but never amazing ones. Not trying to say that unix admins are amazing. I've only met a handful that I would call amazing and their primary title was never called a sysadmin. I do however think that the bottom of the barrel differs greatly. With windows admins all you have to do is point and click and hopefully get lucky, and there's plenty of windows sysadmins who do exactly that. With unix you have to have some basic understanding of how the system works in order to use it (ie know where the config file is and how to edit it).

    Then again maybe you and I just have different opinions of amazing sysadmins. My opinion of one is someone who has read and remembers most of the major protocol rfc's, knows how the major servers integrate with the OS and can debug problems with basic operating system tools, not the tools provided by the software, etc etc. Maybe amazing to you just means they can get a web server running?

  21. Re:Not that closed, but also not the local pub on Grad Student Looking To Contribute To Open Source · · Score: 1

    i actually disagree with most of what you said. sure if you want to be involved as one of the core developers for the project you may want to do that. Hosting your own patches though, that one is some good advice.

    What I've done for projects I've contributed to is:

    1. Find the page or file where they talk about how to make contributions. If you can't find it, mail your changes to the project maintainer and he will either submit them for you or give you access to submit it yourself. If neither of those are an option, just submit them to the development mailing list.

    2. Search through the mailing lists for people talking about the changes you want to make or just to get an idea of what people are looking for. Also check out the TODO file in the repository as many times things that are needed are added there.

    3. Check the development mailing lists to make sure no one is already working on the changes you want to make. If you can't tell, send them an email and tell them you're planning on making those changes and want to make sure no one else is working on it already.

    4. Make the changes

    5. Submit the changes with whichever method you figured out in step 1.

    Developers are very temperamental and that's especially noticeable in the open sourced world where there's no management to put together the coding rules (such as coding style). So unless you want to get involved with a group of developers who are constantly bickering because one likes 3 space indention while another likes 4 and are trying to convince someone else that indention is important because they didn't indent at all... just submit find a project, submit your changes and move on to the next project. That or start your own project so you can be the bickering maintainer.

  22. Re:get a lawsuit on Careful What You Post, the FBI Has More of These · · Score: 1

    i remember seeing somewhere when i read the original reddit post (maybe the friends comments), he was being followed because his father who was a muslim community leader was being investigated. When his dad died, they began investigating him. It also said that he traveled to places like saudi arabia often for work

  23. Re:get a lawsuit on Careful What You Post, the FBI Has More of These · · Score: 1

    the battery for my car is in the trunk so to access that it would absolutely be breaking and entering. However you wouldn't need to access the battery to tap into the cars power. You could either just puncture an existing line or attach the wires to plenty of other devices in the engine compartment which draw from the battery or just connect it to the alternator (which is what I would assume that they do since it would otherwise kill the battery while they car is off).

  24. Re:Uh, what for? on What Tech Should Be In a Fifth-Grade Classroom? · · Score: 1

    I can actually think of one very useful thing computers can do to help learning which we couldn't really do without them. That's how to research information to find answers. Sure before you had encyclopedias and libraries and whatnot, but most kids (people in general really) wouldn't do that because they either couldn't afford to own the books and/or didn't want to take the time to go to the library. Now (using an old bad cliche), we have the information at our fingerprints and we just need to know how to find it. I can't even count the number of times I've seen friends who are just average computer users try to find out information on something just fail and give up. I then find the information for them in like 30 seconds.

    The wealth of shared knowledge we now have is something that humans have never had before and people need to learn how to access it.

  25. Re:And technology? on What Tech Should Be In a Fifth-Grade Classroom? · · Score: 1

    Someone who knows math isn't going to evaluate 3*27 using 3*2*10 + 7*3

    Are you saying I don't know math because I calculated it as (3 * 25) + (3 * 2)?